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So much for the thing of sense; but it would appear that the
prototype There of the living form, the universal horse, must
look deliberately towards this sphere; and, that being so, the
idea of horse must have been worked out in order there be a horse
here?
Yet what was that there to present the idea of the horse it was
desired to produce? Obviously the idea of horse must exist before
there was any planning to make a horse; it could not be thought
of in order to be made; there must have been horse unproduced
before that which was later to come into being. If, then, the
thing existed before it was produced- if it cannot have been
thought of in order to its production- the Being that held the
horse as There held it in presence without any looking to this
sphere; it was not with intent to set horse and the rest in being
here that they were contained There; it is that, the universal
existing, the reproduction followed of necessity since the total
of things was not to halt at the Intellectual. Who was there to
call a halt to a power capable at once of self-concentration and
of outflow?
But how come these animals of earth to be There? What have they
to do within God? Reasoning beings, all very well; but this host
of the unreasoning, what is there august in them? Surely the very
contrary?
The answer is that obviously the unity of our universe must be
that of a manifold since it is subsequent to that unity-absolute;
otherwise it would be not next to that but the very same thing.
As a next it could not hold the higher rank of being more
perfectly a unity; it must fall short: since the best is a unity,
inevitably there must be something more than unity, for
deficiency involves plurality.
But why should it not be simply a dyad?
Because neither of the constituents could ever be a pure unity,
but at the very least a duality and so progressively [in an
endless dualization]. Besides, in that first duality of the
hypothesis there would be also movement and rest, Intellect and
the life included in Intellect, all-embracing Intellect and life
complete. That means that it could not be one Intellect; it must
be Intellect agglomerate including all the particular intellects,
a thing therefore as multiple as all the Intellects and more so;
and the life in it would nat be that of one soul but of all the
souls with the further power of producing the single souls: it
would be the entire living universe containing much besides man;
for if it contained only man, man would be alone here.
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